Didgeridoo Drum Dance
Various artists
Music Mosaic, www.music-mosaic.com

If you have customers who can’t get enough of the Australian didgeridoo, this compilation from the excellent Music Mosaic label is the solution. Didgeridoo Drum Dance should fulfill everyone who hungers for the buzzing, barking, and droning sounds of this ancient instrument. If you play this CD in-store, make sure your store’s aisles are wide, because the word “dance” in the title is not an idle claim. These sonic explorations of world-beat rhythms and Aboriginal growls will get in the blood of anyone with a pulse. Unlike similar compilations, the only instrumental accompaniment to the didgeridoo is pervasive rhythm played on either percussion, drums, or via programmed beats. This doesn’t keep this CD from being a veritable stew of many flavors!

Land of the Buddhas
Chinmaya Dunster
New Earth Records, www.newearthrecords.com

Land of the Buddhas is a career-retrospective collection culled from the New Earth recordings of Indian/world fusion artist Chinmaya Dunster, who releases music both as a solo artist and with his ensemble, the Celtic Ragas Band. Dunster excels at retaining the basic motifs of Indian raga music while infusing it with world influences (e.g., Celtic) or more contemporary textures and stylings. This “best of” CD showcases his many-hued musical tapestry: the opening classical raga “Rag Shivranjani,” the Deuter-ish “Gir Forest,” the meditative “Full Moon,” a slyly sensual and slightly funky “Bhairavi,” and the rousing closing piece, a mixture of Irish reels and Indian rhythms, “Chance Finding.”

Destination Beyond
Steve Roach
Projekt, www.projekt.com

Some Steve Roach fans may not know that this desert Southwest citizen has a number of musical personalities, not just his trademark darker, ambient, drone-like soundscapes. Destination Beyond illustrates this as Roach infuses his fluid synthesizer textures with a stream of subtle-yet-kinetic electronic rhythms. Since the CD contains one long track, the music gradually morphs and evolves over its 71 minutes. Opening with a swirl of warm, ambient keyboards, the percolating beats gradually emerge from the shadows and envelope the textural underpinnings. The album also features a fair amount of the more typical, shimmering desert spacemusic for which Roach is so well known. Destination Beyond is another satisfying ambient album from this acclaimed artist.

Mountain Spirits
Conni St. Pierre
SmashEasy, www.smasheasy.com

Conni St. Pierre is a unique artist in the New Age music genre, and Mountain Spirits is her most adventurous CD to date. While St. Pierre’s instruments are not unusual—alto and shakuhachi flutes, as well as an assortment of synths and keyboards, joined by Patrick Malia on tabla and guitar on three songs—it’s the way she uses her bell-tone synths and haunting flutes that differentiates her from other artists in the field. Although the first two tracks are more lively, Mountain Spirits tends to be minimalist, introspective, and reflective. “Under the Tundra” features only echoed piano, while “Rivulet” flows with layers of electronic keyboards. “Snow Fields” is moody with a subtle dose of quasi-dissonance, and the closing three tracks are dark, drifting soundscapes suffused with shadowy beauty.

The Promise
Michael Stribling
Leela Music, www.leela-music.com

Electronic keyboard artist Michael Stribling gets better with each successive release. His sixth, The Promise, demonstrates his mastery across a variety of styles and moods, as he deftly navigates from the percolating electronica of the opening “Bright New Day” through the dreamy fluidity of “When Love Comes Near,” the aptly-titled languid “Late at Night,” the quasi-ambient melancholy of “Forgotten Dreams,” the gentle bubbliness of “Distant Shores,” and the playful effervescence of the closing trippy “All in Good Time” (reminiscent of uptempo Ray Lynch). This is a richly diverse and highly accomplished album.

Liberation’s Door
Snatam Kaur
Spirit Voyage Records, www.spiritvoyage.com

Snatam Kaur and guest artist Guru Ganesha Singh unite their voices and Singh’s guitar playing on the wonderful Liberation’s Door, a beautiful fusion of chants and songs accompanied by both traditional (sarod, santoor, esraj, and tabla) and contemporary instruments (flute, sax, cello, keyboards, and bass). The first track, “Servant of Peace,” is a great example of this amalgam of the two musical styles. While the chants are sung in a subdued, flowing, gentle manner, when Kaur switches over to the English lyrics of the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, the music takes on the infectiousness of a modern folk-rock motif. The remaining nine tracks continue to showcase Kaur’s outstanding vocals as well as impressive musical contributions from the other 11 accompanists. This is undoubtedly one of the top chant releases of the past year.

Bill Binkelman has been reviewing New Age, ambient, and world-beat music since 1997. Email him at bill@newageretailer.com.